If the dog owner's insurance says it has video of your child "looking fine," that's not proof your case is weak. It's a tactic.

In Hilo, that usually means the claim has gotten expensive enough that the insurer decided to spend money trying to shrink it.

A child bitten in the face at a friend's house can end up with ER care at Hilo Benioff, follow-up visits, infection concerns, scarring, and sometimes later plastic surgery or counseling. If you're a farm worker without health insurance, every delay hits harder. The bills don't wait just because the adjuster does.

Why they're filming

A private investigator is usually looking for footage that can be taken out of context.

Maybe your child laughs at a birthday party in Keaukaha. Maybe you carry groceries from KTA. Maybe the kid walks into a clinic without crying. The insurer will try to turn a few minutes of normal life into "see, not that injured."

That's bullshit, especially in a facial dog-bite case.

Kids can be active and still have pain, nightmares, swelling, sensitivity, embarrassment, or lasting scars. A child smiling in a parking lot off Kanoelehua Avenue does not erase what happened in that house.

Yes, they can watch from public places

In general, an investigator can film from public roads, parking lots, sidewalks, or other places where there's no real expectation of privacy.

They can sit in a car outside your apartment. They can follow at a distance. They can record you going into stores, school, a clinic, or the park.

What they usually cannot do is trespass, hide inside private areas, harass you, or secretly record where privacy clearly exists.

That's the line.

And here's what most people don't realize: the investigator is often not just watching the child. They're watching the adults too. If a parent says the child needs constant help and the video shows the parent dropping the child at a relative's place and heading to work in Panaewa, the insurer will try to use that too.

The old medical records problem

This is where it gets ugly.

Insurers rarely stop at surveillance. If the bite is to the face, they may ask for broad medical authorizations and start digging for anything they can twist: old scars, prior skin issues, speech therapy, counseling, anxiety treatment, even unrelated pediatric records.

They do this because Hawaii claims are often fought on damages, not just fault. If the dog bit your child, the argument becomes about how much harm was really caused.

So they go looking for a way to say the scar was partly there already, the emotional distress isn't new, or the child had prior problems with confidence, sleep, or behavior.

That does not let them off the hook if the bite made things worse.

Hawaii law does not give them a free pass

A defendant generally takes the injured person as they are. People call this the eggshell plaintiff rule.

If a child was more vulnerable to scarring, infection, anxiety, or emotional trauma than another child might have been, that does not reduce responsibility for the harm actually caused.

Same with aggravation of a prior condition. If there was already some issue and the dog bite made it worse, the worsening still matters.

That's the fight: not whether your child was perfect before, but what changed after the attack.

What to do right now

Do these four things before the insurance company builds its own version of the story:

• Save every photo of the wound from day one forward, every text with the dog owner, every clinic note, every bill, and keep a simple timeline of swelling, stitches, missed school, sleep problems, and behavior changes.

Don't post your child online. Not the healing photos, not the beach trip, not "finally smiling again." An adjuster or investigator will grab whatever helps them.

Don't guess on calls. If they say, "So your child is doing much better now, right?" that's bait. Short answers are safer than trying to sound polite.

Don't sign a blanket medical release unless you're ready for them to rummage through years of records.

And if someone keeps showing up where your family goes in Hilo, write down dates, times, locations, license plate details, and what happened. Bayfront, Prince Kuhio Plaza, school pickup, the soccer field, wherever. Patterns matter.

Insurance companies love clips. Claims are built on context.

A ten-second video from a parking lot means damn near nothing if the full record shows facial wounds, follow-up treatment, scar progression, fear around dogs, and a child whose life changed after one bite.